Auguste sighed in the darkness and admitted: 'The price is good at the moment, but in truth I hate the smell of potatoes.' He pulled fretfully at a couple of sacks, trying to find himself a more comfortable position in the little hut. 'And madame, you must be very uncomfortable?'

'I had not realized potatoes could be so hard,' Sarah admitted, 'but if my husband is to be believed, we'll soon be sitting on the hard wooden seats of a boat and probably thinking of potatoes with nostalgia...'

And how long would Nicholas be? He had talked for half an hour with Gilbert, Louis, Auguste and his brother Albert, and now he had gone for a walk along the quay. She saw now that he had been very clever. Although he had told her back at the château that he had no plans for their escape, in fact he had an idea. Certainly as he had explained it to the men, speaking softly in the darkness of Auguste's hut in the fruit and vegetable market, he had sounded diffident. Not nervous, but almost shy, so much so that first Auguste and then Gilbert had tried to reassure him. Then, as he explained his idea piece by piece, like stripping an artichoke, they had discussed it among themselves, exclaiming from time to time at its soundness, like antiquarians examining old china or an early edition of a book and agreeing on its authenticity.

The more they had exclaimed, the more diffident Nicholas had become, putting up reasons why his idea would never work and declaring he did not want anyone to risk his life in such a stupid venture. 'Stupid venture', a phrase which translated well into French, was the one that definitely turned the tide, though whether a neap or a spring, she did not care. At that point, the four Frenchmen rallied together to persuade Nicholas that the plan - by now it had graduated from an idea - was not only possible but certain of success and Sarah sensed that in their own minds it had become their plan: one of which Captain Ramage had now to be convinced.

Then she realized that as far as Nicholas was concerned it had been a plan all the time but was such a gamble that its only chance of success was to have it carried out by men who were convinced it would succeed. What was that phrase Nicholas had once used? 'Better one volunteer than three pressed men.' So with four volunteers he had the equivalent of a dozen. And, of course, his wife! Louis seemed to be bearing up bravely, she thought, to the fact that his wife had decided not to come. Louis said she would go to her parents as soon as she was sure he had escaped. Between them they had prepared a likely story of Louis throwing her out of the house - of the servants' quarters of Jean-Jacques' house, rather.

Sarah sensed that both Louis and his wife had reached the stage where they bored each other. In another year it would be followed by dislike and that would turn to hatred. The wife missed life on the farm where she had been brought up, obviously preferring feeding the pigs and mucking out the cattle to feeding humans and making beds, and as she was the only child, she would inherit the farm on the death of her parents. Clearly, Sarah realized, each thought the parting had come amicably and at the right time. And, not surprisingly, the other servants had decided to stay behind.

Where was Nicholas? This was worse than being a young girl waiting to grow up, or a pregnant woman waiting for her hour to come. Or, she thought bitterly, a sailor's wife waiting for her man to return ...

Ramage looked in the darkness across the Brest Roads. 'Roads' - a strange name but one usually given to the anchorage in front of the port. Well, even though it was dark but cloudless, giving the stars a chance to prove themselves before the moon rose, there was plenty of traffic in the Roads; it seemed as busy as Piccadilly after the Newmarket Races, when winners wanted to celebrate and losers wanted to drown their sorrows, and the Duchess of Manston always gave a ball at which it was forbidden to talk about racehorses.

Spanish Point over there, forming the south side of Le Goulet. the Château black and menacing, its walls now sharp-edged shadows. Somewhere over there in the Roads, L'Espoir was at anchor, and by now Jean-Jacques would be on board, a prisoner, probably awake and thinking of his home or his future in the tropical heat and sickness of the Île du Diable. Boats were going out to the frigates and ships of the line, many more than would normally be taking officers to and fro. There was no doubt that the ships were being prepared for sea in great haste.

He paused against the trunk of a huge plane tree, hidden from the sharp eyes of any patrolling gendarmes. The masts of the distant ships were like leafless shrubs lining twisting paths. The ships of the line were easy to distinguish, while one, two, three frigates and more were over to the right, towards Pointe des Espagnols. Further round to the left, partly hidden by the cliffs rising up at Presqu'île de Plougastel, were more frigates. Where was L'Espoir?

Ah, there was the Murex brig, much easier to spot because she had only two masts and was much closer. And it was near the top of the tide; almost slack now, and the ebb would start in half an hour or so.

Anchored ships were something like weathervanes on church steeples. If the wind was strong and the current weak they indicated wind direction, but if the current was strong (as it would be at spring tides) and the wind weak they showed the direction from which the current was coming.

On a calm night at slack water, when the current stopped flooding in and paused before ebbing like a bewildered man on a ballroom floor, ships headed in various directions, and those carelessly anchored and usually lying to single anchors would drift and foul neighbours.

He cursed softly because at night distances were always hard to estimate, although by some good fortune the Murex brig had been anchored more than half a mile from the nearest ship, a frigate. And she was near enough to where he stood to see that only a single boat floated astern of her on its painter. Either the rest of her boats had been hoisted back on board or they were being kept in the dockyard. In other words, it was unlikely that the French guards had been reinforced and, more important, if they were not expecting visitors in the shape of senior officers, they would be keeping the rum jar tilted, with all the prisoners in irons.

He shivered, but was not sure if the goosepimples came from the chill of the night or the knowledge that he could no longer delay going back to the hut to start everyone moving. Sarah was the problem: she was his hostage unto fortune, although she must never realize it. When the Calypso went into action he had worried about Paolo, who was Gianna's heir and nephew; now it was Sarah. Would he ever go into action having given no hostages, with nothing to bother him but the fight itself? There was always something to stop him concentrating all his thoughts on the action. He shrugged and then smiled at the stupidity of such a movement alone in the darkness.

Probably most captains of the King's ships were often in this same predicament - especially, he told himself, if they were married. Yet if you had a wife, and perhaps children, you thought of them whether they were in a house in the quiet countryside or if the wife was waiting nearby in a rowing boat: in one instance you were worrying about her being widowed and the children made fatherless; in the other you were worrying about her safety. Either way, you were worrying; either way you were preoccupied. So perhaps Earl St Vincent was right when he said that if an officer married, he was lost to the Service...

Sarah and the four men waiting in the hut clearly expected to start off at once. He took out his watch. Yes, by now the French guards would have soaked up enough rum to ensure they were befuddled, if not in a stupefied sleep.